Marrying the Muse

Guest Post by Eros-Alegra Clarke

Seven years ago, when my husband and I announced our engagement, we were counseled by an older couple to develop a habit of ‘couch time’ for our relationship; a time each day where we sat and talked. We laughed and nodded and said, “Yes, of course.” The couple, who had three children said, “No, really, we’re serious.” Now that we have our own two kids and a third one on the way, we understand. We know how seductive exhaustion can be, how easy it is to turn on the television and tune out. It is tempting to believe that our marriage is self-maintaining, that it will continue to write itself the way we want it to.

I have come to believe that crafting a novel requires the same sort of commitment to couch time as a marriage does. It is a different type of relationship maintenance than that required by short stories. Working on a short story is a brief and passionate affair. The short story muse can knock on my window in the middle of the night and whisper, “Let’s go walking beneath the stars.” And I follow that flash of brilliance and let it unfold because it will only last so long. Sleep can be caught up on; small issues can be obsessed over; spontaneity held in high regard because at the end of our time together, we can retreat to our separate lives. The revision happens without children in the background jumping on the furniture. I can focus on the scene at hand, perfecting it without worrying about how the choices I have made will show up 10 or 20 scenes into the story ahead. A short story is like taking care of someone else’s child for a few days. I can be full of patience. I wonder and delight in the child’s mischief. I can buy some quiet time by feeding them cookies after midnight without worrying I have just turned the cute little Gizmos into Gremlins.

A novel, from the first chapter, is a marriage with children and a mortgage. It requires the balancing act of being in the inspiration of the moment while tending to all of the daily responsibilities. I have to make sure the characters, like my children, are fed, bathed, happy, played with, growing well, learning the lessons they should be learning. I get up in the middle of the night when one of them cries. I make sure the plot is a solid home for them to live in. I pay the bills, keep the car running, clean the toilets, do the laundry, and agonize about important decisions for the future. And at some point each day, I need to sit with the story and talk. I dig out the issues. I listen carefully. I edit what no longer belongs. I try to be honest. I have to let everything else go and tune into the heart of the relationship.

The work is intense, but as is often said about parenthood, “It is the hardest thing I’ve ever done but it is also the most rewarding.”  I love the intimacy of working on a novel. Looking back over the rough drafts is like tracing the developing lines in my husband’s face. They are a roadmap of the life we have chosen together. The daily hard work, even when I am complaining every step of the way, is a testimony of how deeply I love the world I am creating.

 ***

Eros-Alegra Clarke is currently writing her first novel under the mentorship of her agent. In the meantime, she has been slowly building publications including a story “Naming Shadows” in the literary journal Bitter Oleander. A wife, mother of two (with a third on the way), and graduate student, Alegra contributes to Maria Schneider’s website Editor Unleashed for writers: http://editorunleashed.com and can be found blogging about life, writing, and everything in between at: http://alegra22.wordpress.com .

 

Intro or Extro?

I know that folks prefer easy categories–publishers sure do. Agents are partial to them, too. Of course what I like to write often defies easy categorizing, a flaw I have not yet been able to reconcile. When it comes time to pitch my work, I shove it into the most similar category I can find, like one might stuff a large foot into a gorgeous but too tight pairof shoes for an occasion.  This may be a result of my personality. Most people who know me would probably call me an extrovert. I’m good at socializing, I crave it, and I never go very long without some of it. But that would also overlook the introverted side of my nature. I am, I have decided, an introverted extrovert.

Say what?

Well, for example, I’ve just returned from a weekend of socializing. First at the wonderful Redwood Writer’s Conference (Kudos, y’all, for a job well done, especially for a 1st year!), then visiting half a day with friends, then my mother’s birthday party.

And now, home again for the first time since Friday, I don’t  want to visit my social network, forums or Twitter, where interaction is involved. I need to replenish. I’m socialized out. And this is also the place from which I write.

The extroversion is the “collection” side of my nature–I go out into the world and take in stimulus and impressions, stories and characters, but then I must hole up, sometimes even withdraw, to this inner cave or I will have nothing at all to write, and no energy with which to write it.

Yet many writers are professed introverts through and through–they prefer the silence and solace of their own company How about you? Does socializing add to, or take away from your writing? Can you be easily defined as an introvert or extrovert, are are you a shade of gray?

Intrepid Dreamers

Most of the freelance writers I know are talented dreamers, who took to the field through a variety of unusual paths–many giving up jobs that sucked the life out of their souls, many taking huge leaps of faith to launch themselves.

Recently, one of these intrepid dreamers, Brandi-Ann Uyemura, looked me up after reading some of my work. It turns out she lives less than a half hour from me, so we decided to get together for coffee, to talk about the writing life. For freelancers, who no longer have offices, it’s a good thing to get together in person, step out of the isolation of our desks, put on something other than pajamas (you know who you are!), and talk shop.

The visit was such a pleasant reminder that not everyone in the freelance world is in competition with each other, that some of us work better together, in fact.

She has since interviewed me for her blog 2inspired.com.

She’s a talented and inspiring writer who deserves to thrive!

The Left Brained Writer Learns to Show, Not Tell

Guest post by Mike Fine

I suspect I may be one of the most “left-brained” writers out there. After 20+ years as a software engineer and managing technical teams and technical projects, I discovered—lo and behold—I love writing! How strange is that? Well, probably not very strange to you if you’re reading this post, but it was certainly strange to me when I first realized it about 10 years ago.

There’s a great deal about being educated and trained as an engineer that works against me as a writer. First, while all of you were probably reading the great works—Austen, Bronte, Melville, Tolstoy—you know the list better than I do—I was taking the easiest Language Arts classes I could find. I had all of these advanced math and science classes, you see…

Second, and more seriously, engineers are trained to distill an issue to its core. The essence of a thing is what matters to engineers; we like to simplify and abstract, to get right to the point. The good news is that because of this, I rarely struggle finding a theme or central idea for my writing. I rarely fear that I’m going to write some long-winding run of flowery prose with no point. I am rarely without a solid outline. The problem is, readers don’t want to be hit over the head and be told the morale or theme, they want to feel it, to experience it. Stories are supposed to immerse the reader in a detailed world with believable characters so that they—the reader—infer the message(s) from the story. And, of course, sometimes, readers will infer things we never intend as writers. I have to force myself to remember this—something I think comes more naturally to most other writers with their predominately right-brained brains.

 Third, because I’m focused more on the essence of the primary arc of the story and the critical characterizations of the main characters, my writing often feels rushed, too much like a treatment than a story. The structures of my stories are usually sound; I struggle with adding enough detail. My wife often says that I’ve painted the trunk of the tree and the larger branches, but none of the smaller twigs or the leaves. Again, I suspect others with different educational backgrounds and personalities have an easier time with this sort of “inside out” nature of writing. I have to constantly remind myself: show the leaves in all their splendor, and let the reader infer that there’s a tree holding them up.

 Like many writers, I struggle to ensure that my writing follows the old maxim, “show, don’t tell.” For years, I couldn’t get my weak engineer brain around this concept. Then, finally, I came up with a way to think about this. I think even you non-engineers out there might benefit from thinking about things this way.

 When we’re guilty of “telling” instead of “showing,” what’s really the problem? It’s that we’ve summarized too much. If I tell you that “Abe and Ben fought,” your experience is much different than if I describe the right crosses, the chipped teeth, and the broken tables. I get that. You get that. Most everyone gets that. But how do we ensure that we don’t fall into the summarization trap? Simple: engage your left brain a little bit.

 Here’s the idea: allocate a certain amount of space—words, paragraphs, or pages—for a scene. Say to yourself, this scene has to take X pages. Let’s take our fight scene. Imagine it’s important to our story. We want to slow time down and stretch this conflict out for all the drama we can milk out of it. So, how many pages should the fight take up on paper? Three pages? Five? Ten?

 Once you decide how many pages (or paragraphs) you want the fight to last, you simply cannot summarize “too much.” If you do, your writing will stop short of your allotted space! If I write that “Abe and Ben fought,” I have to stare at the remaining 9 ½ blank pages for the scene. I have to fill them up. How can I do it? I can start to describe what happens in more detail and by slowing down time. I cannot stop editing and improving my scene until it fills up the space I’ve allocated for the scene. Is it possible I can introduce other kinds of problems into my writing—dialogue that drags, character descriptions that are too lengthy, etc.? Sure. But one thing that’s almost certain: my writing is much more likely to slow time down so that I provide enough details. And that’s something my readers will hopefully enjoy.

 ***

Mike is the co-creator of the Young Writers’ Story Deck Writing Program. He writes technical, marketing, and educational pieces for high tech companies and school districts. He has written novels, short stories, screen plays and stage plays. His stage play “Building a Bridge” was produced in the 2008-09 school year in Sebastopol and received rave reviews. See www.buildingabridgeplay.com  for more information about the play. His short screenplay “Time Capsule” is slated for production for some time in 2009 or 2010. In February 2008, Kansas student and forensics competitor Taylor Montgomery performed Mike’s piece “Pushed”, placing 2nd out of 40 competitors and qualifying for State Champs. Mike’s creative writing can be found at www.blackfoxbooks.com. Mike is an active volunteer in the Mount Diablo Unified School District, and has been an active volunteer in the Morgan Hill Unified School District and at Rocketship Education in San Jose, California.

Write for Pleasure

Guest post by Veronica Hoyle-Kent, of PerSePress

 Remember when writing a story was an act of pure pleasure?  I’m talking back when you didn’t have to be concerned with characters, plot, and conflict.  Back when you would pick up a number two pencil and write a story filled with fantastic creatures, faraway places, and incredibly vile villains. 

Nowadays, writing is such hard work.  Don’t even get me started on the mind-boggling, “what happens when I’m done with the story.”  I want to write as if I didn’t need an agent, wasn’t worried about query letters, and didn’t give a hoot if my words ever appeared in hardback, soft-cover, or e-books.

I think we’d all be better off if we wrote with the ultimate goals in mind…will Mom hang my work on the refrigerator, will Grandma tell me it’s the best story ever, will the teacher give me a gold star?

I consider myself lucky because my mom and my grandmother are still my biggest fans, but it’s so easy to forget that writing is supposed to be about my enjoyment, my amusement, my fulfillment. 

I’m thinking of keeping a separate journal for the inner-child where the words will flow freely without thought of content, punctuation, or grammar.  The first page will read, “Burn Upon my Death” so that I need never worry about being judged on the material contained within.  It will be filled with imaginary creatures, implausible plots, incorrect spelling, and an abundance of adjectives (not to mention ample alliteration).  It will also contain more joy and fulfillment than most of the stories I work so painstakingly to perfect.  Perhaps I will glean from one of these “terribly-written” stories a spark that will ignite the perfectionist in me and inspire me to clean it up, nurture and polish it, until I find the perfect gem lying beneath the dull stone.

In any case, it will release the writer in me to once again feel the joy of a child who believes that anything is possible, that all my writing is magical, and that my destiny is to be a famous and much-admired author.  At the very least, tomorrow I’ll go out and buy myself a big box of gold stars!

***

Veronica is the co-creator of Young Writers’ Story Deck Writing Program. She is the mother of two and a dedicated volunteer in the Morgan Hill Unified School District (California). She writes children’s stories and has worked with young writers in the classroom for many years.

A Picture is Worth (at Least) 1,000 Words

Guest Blog by Tanya Egan Gibson

I’ve never been a picture-person–one of those folks who whips out the camera just in time to capture baby’s first step or a butterfly alighting on a puppy’s nose. On vacations, I miss the sea lion/dolphin/whale breaching the surface and end up with photos of water, water, water. Yesterday at Six Flags my camera’s battery expired before I could get a shot of my daughter touching an elephant’s trunk. (Apparently you’re supposed to charge the battery every once in a while?) When I do manage to extract a working camera from the depths of my purse, I’m likely to decapitate my subjects or backlight them so excessively that they seem walking shadows.

And yet, strange as this might sound, I consider my digital camera one of my most important, and best-used, possessions. Rather than taking notes about a new place or interesting object I might want to include in a story, I photograph it, keeping what amounts to a visual idea notebook on my computer. Even if I’m not the person to whom you’d want entrust the big group photo of your once-in-a-lifetime four-generational family reunion, even I can take a close-up of a pile of shells. (After all, they don’t wriggle or blink.)

Until I had children, I was in the habit of taking extensive handwritten notes about anything that caught my eye. But on a visit to New York when my daughter was two years old, I discovered how hard it is to jot down more than a few words at a time about, say, the Long Island Sound when your little tyke is trying to run into the Sound. In March. In her shoes and coat.

Desperate to pin down everything possible about the Sound for a scene in my novel, I ended up using my camera (which I’d brought along to take cute-and-hopefully-not-headless photos of my daughter at the water’s edge) as my substitute notebook. I snapped countless photos, unworried about centering or composition or lighting: closeups of rocks and shells and drying sepia-colored foam, tight shots of the patterns windswept beach plants and runnels of water left behind in the sand, wide shots of gulls flying past broken pilings far out from shore.

No, the camera couldn’t capture the smell of the air or the texture of the sand or the sounds of lapping water and gulls, but these were at least easier to recollect, later, with this array of images in front of me later, transferred to my computer.

Since then, I’ve taken to “collecting” images wherever I go. I gave to one of my characters the flesh-colored koi my daughter spied in a pond outside a restaurant. I take photos of clothing (on hangers–not on people, as I think it’s intrusive to take stranger’s photos) in which I outfit my fictional people. I snap pictures at floral shops and in gardens to use in my pretend people’s flower arrangements and yards.

In folders on my computer are weeds on the side of a highway. Puddles. Dirty snow, up close. The ugliest doll in Toys R Us. Black paint eroded by the acid of thousands of tiny hands on the metal spinning wheel of an amusement park teacup ride. A spill on aisle seven–glass and pickles and brine.

For many of these I can already envision places in my next novel and short stories. But there’s of course a folder, too, for things that grabbed me without my knowing why. A folder of images for those days when it feels like nothing is new. Sparks of novelty. Jumpstarts.

They’re not centered, usually. And certainly nothing you’d ever frame. But then again, neither were the scribbles in my notebooks.

Tanya Egan Gibson is the author of the novel How to Buy a Love of Reading published in May, 2009.  An alumna of Squaw Valley Community of Writers, she is mother to a four-year-old who produces countless construction-paper “books” that she insists Mommy “get published” and a one-year-old who teethes copies of HTBALOR, and wife to the most patient man in the universe.

Professional Rivalry

I recently came across a series of emails that chronicle the end of a friendship I had with a fellow freelance writer a couple years ago. It’s something that still smarts even now, an event I still can’t quite get my head around. I am shocked to find that the hurt feelings persist.

The friendship began when she, a lovely woman whose name I would see in some of the same local publications I wrote for, contacted me saying she’d been reading my blog.  We got to chatting and decided to meet for coffee.  She’d been freelancing longer than I had and knew all about how lonely it can get at home and sounded supportive of my jump to the same position. 

Over the course of a year or so we got together more and more frequently, sharing exploits. I often marveled at her success and ability to reach a huge variety of publications, and she expressed admiration for things that I did, like writing a book. I thought we had a pretty good mutual admiration society going.

At one point she suggested we “share sources” so that we didn’t trample each other’s writerly toes, since we swam in a pretty small freelance pool. I was surprised and pleased by her openness. I even took a risk and asked for a contact…and found her to be less open than I thought. It was clear she wasn’t really happy with me asking. Mixed messages!

And that’s when it began to go sour, though I didn’t know it for quite some time. I learned later, that, according to her, she’d only offered to share sources because she was already feeling threatened.

When it all fell apart–ostensibly over her perception that I stole an idea from her, when that idea had actually been in the works already but I had never spoken to her about it–it came with accusations that I was taking work that was rightfully hers (though she felt that I did this unconsciously, which was even more confusing). From her perspective, I can see how it looked bad, but she never gave me the benefit of the doubt. The timing looked too coincidental. And I will admit that I should have changed one detail (which was not even set by me) because it was, in fact, too similar.

But that was it for her. I was judged, accused and sentenced without a trial. I tried falling on my sword, to say that I understood if it looked egregious, but I had honestly not borrowed from her, but all that got me was cut. I decided that she had made up her mind at some ponit to be rid of me, and nothing I would have done could have helped. Stupid as it is, I still hurt over it. I was locked on the thought: hey, you reached out to me. You befriended me! What’s that: keeping your enemies close?

In the end, I decided it was too risky to get too close people who ran in the same circles like that. I would admire them from afar. I’ll never know if that was a wise decision or not.

I’d like to know your stories of the personal and the professional getting you into trouble.

Editors Are People Too

I’ve found that it’s all too easy to pin our writerly anxiety about publication on the editors we pitch and submit to, whether as freelance writers or as an author waiting to hear back from a book or proposal out on submission.  Most likely your family, spouse or friends are a tad sick of hearing about how nervous you are…so those feelings end up aimed at the wrong people. You might accidentally think of them as purposely withholding an answer about your precious pitch, or spitefully telling you that it isn’t what they’re looking for. You might even think that they went out of their way to tell you what was wrong with something you pitched. These are understandable, but I think, unnecessary feelings.

You know that little trick that’s supposed to help actors overcome stage fright–picturing the audience in their underwear? Well I like to think of editors as the real people they are. The kind of people who groan when their alarm clock goes off and hit the snooze button for a few more minutes before they have to face the inevitably chock full email in-box or slush pile, the one that waits for them day after day like some looming tower of pressure. I like to imagine editors runing a pair of pantyhose by snagging them on the underside of a desk; exploding their  lasagne all over the inside of the microwave; exchanging gossip or celebrity trash over their stacks of manuscripts; enjoying a delicious afternoon latte on a quiet bench somewhere where no assistant or editorial director or yet another damn writer can bother them with questions about when, why, or…why not.

I like to imagine my editors sliding into a comfy pair of jammies at the end of the day, heaving a groan of satisfied relief that the day is over, that they can turn it all off for a little while, and just be a person again who doesn’t owe anybody an answer.

Because that’s a person I can understand. A person I know is just doing their job, one they probably love, but which also kicks their ass with the workload.

So go easy on the editors. They’re only people too.

Social Network Overwhelm

I feel so old, so out of date for what I’m about to say: between facebook and twitter and just keeping up with my two blogs, I am overwhelmed. And I don’t even get any of these applications on my cell phone! I like all of these forms of expression. The blog was a perfect outlet for a confessional sort like myself, and I understand its importance in a more professional manner, too. Facebook is a fabulous way to keep a quick tab on friends and whittle away time chasing down ghosts of the past. Twitter is like communication in haiku, but it’s also a little bit like what I imagine the stock exchange is like–conversations whizzing over and around one’s head so fast in so many directions it seems impossible that one is actually being noticed.

Yet so many people are out there, doing it all. Blogging regularly, tweeting all over the place, and seamlessly, too. How about you? Can you keep up? Which is your favorite form? If you do it all, how?

Don’t Be Afraid of My Dark Alley

Inevitably, in my blogging life, there comes a fallow period where I turn away from you, hoard all my ideas and insights and treat my blog like a dark alley nobody would want to be caught alone in.

I’ve done it again lately. I could blame it on motherhood or the weather or the economy but the real reason is that sometimes I find the task of constant upkeep daunting. I only recently joined Facebook, after all. I twitter, but still find that more effort than I can handle. I love blogging because I’ve always been the confessional sort, but sometimes even my confessions get stage fright. More so, there are so many blogs out there, run by such amazing people who are basically giving away priceless information for free.

But my friend Maria Schneider over at Editor Unleashed has lit a fire under my blogging kettle again and I feel I owe it to you to at least try.

So I’ll keep it simple today.

What I’m reading: Special Topics in Calamity Physics, by Marisha Pessl. I really held off on reading this for the same reason I often don’t buy popular fashions, watch the hot new shows, or visit museums when a new art show is in town. I’m suspicious of what’s new and hot. Trends frighten me; they feel forced until they’ve been around awhile. I know this is iconoclastic of me and I accept that. It shows that I’m not on The Cutting Edge (to borrow a capitalization strategy from Pessl), Afraid of Change, Set in My Ways. And it took me nearly 100 pages to stop tripping over Pessl’s clever turns of phrase and sink into what is a highly sophisticated, wonderful plot with an ardent and earnest protagonist until I was literally racing through pages (still stopping long enough to smell her prose posies, of course). So, I’m glad I read it, and glad I did, even if I’m late to the party. However, if I were her editor, everything in parentheses in the novel would have gotten cut.

What I’m writing: I’m still working on the novel-in-progress (loosely about a cult that tears a family apart and how my protagonist begins to learn the lies that her life is constructed upon), begun as a Nanowrimo project, which both excites and stymies me. My friend Erika Mailman and I did a n-i-p exchange that re-energized me, and when possible we get together at our “Glass Room of Productivity” at our local library to write. I like this book, but I have given myself some serious plot mazes to plod through.

That’s all for today folks, but I promise to have more of a presence, to populate this blog again with happy people and shiny lights rather than dumpsters and big stagnant puddles of mysterious liquid.

Cuss Time

Jill McCorkle was my first mentor teacher at the Bennington Writing Seminars, where I  earned my MFA in creative writing. She’s a much beloved teacher there for many reasons, from her big, flirty, Southern personality, to her incisive  ability to tell you what works and what doesn’t in your fiction. She was a fabulous entry point for me because she could criticize me and still make me feel like she’d kissed me on the cheek.

She’s written a fantastic article about, in essence, freedom of speech, called “Cuss Time” at The American Scholar. Her article also confirms for me why I hate it when people teach their children to use goofy sounding euphemisms for their body parts. I like to call reality as it is!

Here’s just a taste. Please read the rest for yourself.

From Cuss Time, by Jill McCorkle.

Potential is a powerful word. I remember feeling so sad when my children turned a year old and I knew, from reading about human development, that they had forever lost the potential they were born with to emulate the languages of other cultures, clicks and hums and throat sounds foreign to me. For that short period of time, a mere 12 months, they could have been dropped anywhere in the world and fully adapted accordingly. But beyond this linguistic loss, we are at risk of losing something far greater each and every time we’re confronted with censorship and denial. Perfectly good words are taken from our vocabulary, limiting the expression of a thought or an opinion. I recently read about high schoolers who are not allowed to use the word vagina. And what should they say instead? When you read about something like this (just one recent example of many), you really have to stop and wonder. Is this restriction because someone in charge thinks vaginas are bad? I once had a story editor ask me not to use the word placenta. I wanted to say: “Now tell me again how you got here?” Oh, right, an angel of God placed you into the bill of the stork.

Thanks

I’m grateful to all those people who’ve contributed to my journey as a writer over the years, from mentors in college who had no idea what they were encouraging when they complimented my early attempts at fiction, to editors who have helped polish up my books.

Also to my many colleagues and friends on the path, the list would be too long to read, but I appreciate everything you’ve done for me, and for the writing life.

Have a wonderful holiday!

Thank you
Jordan

Kick-off

I can hardly believe it myself, but I’ve started a professional blog. That means you won’t find (m)any rants about family life or my obnoxious neighbor’s OCD tendency to move around his furniture quite loudly. No, here you will get the following (imagine in comic-book captions shaped like stars and explosions):

 

Bonafide Writing Tips: Beginning with my book Make a Scene, as well as cribbing liberally from other people’s wisdom, I will pontificate and expound and be a good know-it-all to help you improve your writing.

 

Business of Writing: Everyone wants to get published. We’ll discuss methods and madness around that.

 

Talking Heads: Yeah, I’ll have cool people guest-blog about their own writing trials and tribulations, people you can admire or envy or feel superior to, if you like. I will also post interviews that I’ve published with people in the field.

 

Creativity: Based on my other book, co-written with Rebecca Lawton, Write Free: Attracting the Creative Life, I’ll also take you through creative exercises and discussions if “craft” isn’t your thing, or if you’d like to focus a little bit more on getting writing and less on getting published.

 

Free Books: Yes, in these trying financial times, I will be offering free books after asking you to jump through burning hoops of fire, do ridiculous dances and sing embarrassing songs.

 

So stick around, and bring your friends, too.